Meeting ID: 815 0755 1772
To connect by phone dial: +1 646 558 8656
First Week of Advent: HOPE
Prayer Leader: Welcome to our weekly Moment of Oneness when we take a break mid-week to pray together. Tonight, we focus on the theme of HOPE. There are so many uncertainties in our lives right now and our hope and our belief is that the Holy One is walking with us. We begin with the Song “We are Waiting for you” by the Many. We are waiting and hoping for the manifestation of “God-With-Us” fully aware that the Holy One is waiting for us to be signs of hope, the arms of love, and the ones that say: "There is another way."
Opening Song: We are Waiting for you by the Many
https://youtu.be/RndTVIsAuQA?si=bLdPqUPgxsKafm0q
The earth cries out
Nothing feels right
The world cries out
No justice in sight
Fires burning everywhere
Too many, too hot, too bright
We are waiting for you
We are waiting for you
We are waiting for that
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
The child cries out
"Don't turn out the light"
Broken hearts cry out
No end of hurt in sight
Greed and guns rule everywhere
Too many, too strong to fight
We are waiting for you
We are waiting for you
We are waiting for that
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Let us be a sign of hope
Let us be your arms of love
Let us be the ones that say
"There is another way"
Let us be a sign of hope
Let us be your arms of love
Let us be the ones that say
"There is another way"
Let us be a sign of hope
Let us be your arms of love
Let us be the ones that say
"There is another way"
We are waiting for you
You are waiting for us, too
We are waiting for that
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
We are waiting for you
You are waiting for us, too
We are waiting for you
You are waiting for us, too
Reading 1: Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann views hope as trust in what God has done and will do, in spite of evidence to the contrary. He wrote: Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Christians find compelling evidence, in the story of Jesus, that Jesus, with great persistence and great vulnerability, everywhere he went, turned the enmity of society toward a new possibility, turned the sadness of the world toward joy, introduced a new regime where the dead are raised, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again. [1]
Reading 2: Richard Rohr continues with: “Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. Hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without full closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. We are able to trust that Christ will come again, just as Christ has come into our past, into our private dilemmas, and into our suffering world. Our Christian past then becomes our Christian prologue, and “Come, Lord Jesus” is not a cry of desperation but an assured shout of cosmic hope [2].
Prayer Leader: Let us pray for each other and for our world community.
(pause for prayers from the community.
Begin with the words: I bring to this circle: )
Prayer Leader: We pray for these and all unspoken intentions
and we pray that we are signs of hope, arms of love
and the ones that say: "There is another way."
Amen.
Advent blessings to all and goodnight.
References:
[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Gospel of Hope, compiled by Richard Floyd (Westminster John Knox Press: 2018), 104–105.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent (Franciscan Media: 2008), 1–3.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.